Feedlot manure reborn as 'renewable' natural gas

Calgary Herald
Sheila Pratt, Canwest News Service
Published: Sunday, February 15, 2009

Brothers turn cattle waste into biogas, electricity

Two huge tanks with rounded, mushroom lids loom above the snowdrifts, the first glimpse of Alberta's oddest-looking electricity plant and also its greenest.

About one megawatt of power flows out on the wires -- enough power to run the next-door feedlot and turn on the lights in 700 homes in Vegreville and Two Hills.

Two more gigantic tanks are under construction, and beside them, the site is cleared for the final installation, an ethanol plant, the greenest in Canada, thanks to homegrown, Alberta inventions.

In the land of big oil, a fledgling alternative energy economy is taking shape down on the farm and it's based on that most plentiful of Alberta resources--a smelly, endless supply of cattle poop. That and the inventiveness of two sets of farmer brothers and a scientist from China who made Edmonton her home.

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